This is it
by The Ginger Muffins
Summary: Darkfic, I suppose. Probable bad grammar. Set in a Dystopian society, and everybody dies. Hints of pairings and slash. Nolocentric drabble-y oneshot . I think that's all you need to know...


**A/N: 3845 words, drabble-ish. Pretty much everyone dies. Yeah, it's that kind of fic. Nolo's point of view, but the first sentence gives that away. Confusingly written on purpose. Should be writing my Nanowrimo novel or the Junkyard, or even the three papers I have due next week, but this was scratching my literary itch. Enjoy!**

**(Recommended listening; "Is this it?" by the Strokes, and "You're not alone," by Olive.)**

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* * *

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_My name is Nolo Pasaro, and this is it. I'm the last one standing, the proverbial final girl; it's all up to me now and that other cliché crap. _

Maybe I should have figured out that this day was coming. The day Taro died.

* * *

But on the day of Tone's funeral, it was sunny and bright and I was so angry at the world. Why did it have to be happy? Why were the streets full of oblivious people, people who had no idea what I was going through? Why was the world still turning? Tone was dead!

""Life has to go on,"" a voice said, behind me.

I whirled around, ready to scream at the person who could have said such a thing, that bastard, why shouldn't I stop? But it was Vert who spoke, and he clearly had more to say.

"That's what my dad said to me, when mom died. It was why he couldn't come home right away. And I half agree with him, life has to go on. But you're allowed to stop."

And I didn't know what to say to him, and I didn't know what to say when they buried Tone, and the Teku were the only ones in attendance, and I could see the damn Metal Maniacs watching from outside the cemetery, gloating. So I didn't stop then. I let my rage carry me forwards, not stopping to mourn Tone, not really, not until it was too late.

* * *

The NewGov threw around the word "New" a lot. "New World Order", "New Leader", "NewLight". The NewGov knew the power of change, no pun intended. The New Leader was my old charges dad, and Vert himself was up with the top brass. I could never figure out what motivated Vert to follow his father so closely. The day that we found out what the NewGov was doing, what our old friend was doing, it was all to late to stop the boulder from falling down the hill. The NewGov talked about a war, a new war, a war of intergalactic proportions, and they took over the world. "For your own good," They said, but nothing they did was ever good. Different wasn't good for them, bizarre wasn't good for them, beauty and truth and kindness; all these things were a blight on the state. The New World was Unity, the New World was Strength, the New World talked like 1984, V for Vendetta, the USSR, Brave New World, and McCarthy had had a kid, and they were the kid. It was dark, it was lonely, and we racers became fugitives, we didn't want to get caught, we were so scared of getting caught, especially after we found out what the Silencerz had done to Esmerelda Sanchez and Skeet and Vesuvius and all the other Highway 35 racers. I'd never seen Taro so upset.

The day he died, he seemed almost relieved.

* * *

We stepped outside for a minute. The underground tunnels that had sprung up across America, the increasingly disused and dead catacombs built for runners and terrorists, and we were some of the last to use them. The air in them was dead air, and we'd been drinking it in for days. Karma hadn't wanted to go outside. She'd had a bad feeling, one of us would make a mistake, but in the end she followed us outside anyway. Something must have attracted the sniper on the roof, because I saw the red dot on the back of her head a second after Taro did, and he leaped forwards to save her.

He died in seconds, no famous last words.

Taro was always quiet, didn't talk much, but it was in a supportive way. Lani didn't get it, she needed someone who could visibly give back. Lani needed evidence if she was going to believe that the support was there. Karma just knew, in the same way that Taro just knew. They were both too smart and too sharp, and too receptive. That receptiveness, that working with whatever was coming, that was how they were strong. It had scared Lani away, to me, to Monkey a little, to loud and crazy people. Taro and Karma were happy to be quiet together, making plans and taking things as they came. Then he got shot, and it wasn't quiet, and it was dark, and we should have buried the body, but he was dead and we had to run. It was Karma who said that. "We have to run," she said, not looking back, physically dragging a stunned Tork and a hysterical Lani into the tunnels. Taro died in seconds.

He seemed almost relieved.

* * *

We heard about the other Highway 35 racers and lost hope for Vert. So when he showed up as one of the highest-ranking members of the NewGov, I was more than pissed. I wanted him dead. He'd abandoned us to play with daddy, to rule the world, and Taro was dead. Kurt was the only one of us who still had any hope in "Chief of Staff Josef Wheeler". The NewGov chose to use the US government as a base, and copied it, a shallow shell of a democracy. President Wheeler. No Vice President, no need for one. President Wheeler wasn't looking to die any time soon. Before Tezla died, he told us how it would work. The organic technology of the Accelerons could fuse with the flesh and keep the body alive for years almost. But Tezla told us this coughing up blood. He died after Taro as we were trying to kill of President Wheeler. He died, and President Wheeler gave a new address to the "Nation" a week later, talking about the opening of 'Farms', to which convicts would be sent. Enemies of the State would be sent there, he said, to live out their lives in a timely and useful manner.

Before we knew any of this, Banjee tried to kill us. He said it was the words in his head. We didn't know. He just tried to kill us, and then he tried to get us to kill him. We were sorry.

* * *

After they were all gone, I drifted, like a ghost. A data ghost, people called it later, someone who was supposed to be dead but wasn't. The computers couldn't see me, headsets didn't register me, and for all intents and purposes, I was dead. But I wasn't. Sometimes I would walk into a restaurant or a park and just scream, but nobody noticed. I was a vagrant, purposeless, and lonely. Or I had a purpose, but I didn't want to face it. I had to save the human race, but I had no plans, no weapons, and no back up. I was utterly alone.

Maybe it was luck that saved me, maybe it was fortune, or maybe it was fate. Starving and cold, I wandered into a house, just to see what would happen. I was testing boundaries, maybe, or I just wanted everything to end. Maybe it was fate, or fortune, or luck, or maybe because the world like circles, but I walked right into a small house in the San Jose area that had been abandoned for years. There was a picture of a smiling Stepford family on the wall, blond father and son grinning, brunette mother smiling softly, blue California skies in the background. I followed my instincts through the house.

His room- Vert's room- looked like someone had searched through it meticulously. Items were stacked in piles. Photos were neatly piled in a box. Anything that seemed suspicious had been burned. It was a sad memory, an echo of someone I'd once known. I found a purple set of keys in the master bedroom, and that was when I decided to try my luck.

* * *

When Kurt died, Markie cried for three days. He'd lost his parents, but he hadn't seen them die, hadn't felt their lives fade away. Kurt's blood had sprayed over him, and he would tell me in the following weeks that he never really felt clean. Markie was lost without Kurt to boss him around and argue with him, and I knew how that felt. Markie and Kurt reminded me of my brother, and that just made me angry. So I arranged for a mission of vengeance, into Silencerz territory. We didn't tell the others, just left, running madly into the night to look for retribution. Two lost brothers. I guess maybe I thought that if I managed to avenge Kurt, I'd also avenge Tone, even though I knew that Tone didn't need vengeance or anger or misery. But something was restless about it. Tone's cycle seemed incomplete, or something. Maybe it was because I refused to stop when I could, and suddenly I was out of control, hurtling towards the edge of a cliff, and I was going to die. And I was going to take Markie with me.

It wasn't fair on him that he died, and it wasn't fair on me that I didn't.

Vert killed him. I'd never been so scared. Vert looked completely impassive when he killed one of his best friends, and it terrified me. So I ran, and I left Markie behind. He died.

* * *

After Lani died, there were five of us- Karma, Porkchop, Monkey, Tork, and me.

* * *

Karma started smoking after Taro had gone; she went through cigarettes as if it were a race. Tork, who I think understood best out of all of us, tried to get her to slow down. Lani tried too, and the three of them bonded in this really weird way. We had to bond, since there was nobody else left. Monkey and I managed to talk about Lani, and found common ground. Shirako and Monkey went on long discussions about engines, and whenever Porkchop could get through the mumbo-jumbo he joined in too. Shirako was talking more. His headphones had long since broken. When I asked why he'd started being so chatty, he replied, "It's just so hard to live in silence, you know?"

I wondered if the pun had been intentional for the longest time.

* * *

Tone and I raced at everything. I wanted to be better than him, wanted to beat him, wanted to be him so badly, and I didn't quite know how to do it but damn if I wasn't going to try. When he died, he took on a mythic quality, and I felt like no matter how hard or fast I raced he would always be faster. Because he was dead.

* * *

"Do you remember in high school, you learn about the Nazis, and how after the Holocaust they'd say stuff like 'I did my duty as a soldier, I didn't know what I was doing'?" he asked, drawing on a cigarette. _Don't do that,_ I thought, _you're reminding me of Karma, and you're not allowed to do that.

* * *

_

Lani died three feet to my right. I could almost reach her fingertips with my hand. But they were bloody, and broken backwards and out of my reach. She'd died because a group of soldiers found us trying to break back in to the Silencerz headquarters. She'd been obsessed with returning ever since she'd found out about Markie. He was her last connection to Highway 35, that time before Tezla's new project when everything had seemed clean and innocent. Lani was certain that Mark was still alive, but we all tried to talk her out of going back. She would definitely die. After a few weeks, she let go of the idea, or at least we thought she had. She talked to me, and she talked to Monkey and Porkchop, but she avoided Karma and Tork.

Afterwards we figured that this was because the latter two would have been able to see through her façade.

As it was, we only noticed something was wrong when she walked in to where I was sleeping and kissed me deeply. Then she left without a word. I later found out that she had done the same thing to Monkey, though at the time I was too stunned to concentrate. I ran after her, but couldn't find her anywhere in the warehouse we'd been staying in. That was about when I realized what was going to happen.

I got shot first. I remember it very clearly, because I dropped, and watched what happened to Lani from the corner of my eye as I lay bleeding on the ground. She fell to the earth, eyes too wide and too glassy, and her mouth impassive and emotionless. And lifeless.

The Silencerz would have killed me too, but Karma showed up, and shot every one of them with the same precision she put to everything. I knew that she hated killing, and she'd hated war, but as Monkey sobbed over Lani's body, and Porkchop tried to console him, and Tork started working on my bloodied chest, I looked at my only remaining teammate. She stood over us, watching impassively for enemies of any sort, sucking on a cigarette. She killed them to save me. I had become her mission, her fight, what she was working on. I was her drive. It was my job to stay alive. So I resolved to live.

* * *

Shirako died quickly, in a routine food-run, a gunshot wound to the back of the neck. I didn't know what to feel. Kurt tried not to cry, but sometimes he couldn't hide it. It was difficult, mostly because Shirako had _always_ been there, like some steady constant, quietly offering advice, softly asking if he could do anything, offering his opinions about music, head bobbing to a rhythm only he could hear. Sometimes I thought I saw him out of the corner of my eye, or heard him cough to get my attention. But he was gone, and I was angry.

* * *

Over time, I learned to direct my hate at Vert. Everyone else was doing it. Whereas President Wheeler was in charge, Vert was the face of the Government, Vert was the face people saw when a child was killed, when food was scarce, when thousands died from cholera, from typhoid, from plague, Vert was the one whose face we saw when dissidents were rounded up and sent to farms, where they were worked to death, and so we hated Vert. It was just so easy.

* * *

Monkey killed himself because Lani was dead, and Porkchop did so because Monkey was going to die, and his whole family was dead, and everything was hopeless. So why not go out with a bang, and prove to the world that there were people still fighting, still willing to kill themselves for freedom? The NewGov called them terrorists, but we'd been called that for years anyway. They drove Old Smokey into a rehabilitation facility, late at night, and they were the only two casualties. So the people called them freedom fighters. But they shouldn't have died; it was stupid for them to die, and Tork…

* * *

I didn't cry the day Tone died, and neither did Karma, even though she'd known him just as long as I had. They were friends in kindergarten, before I was even born. Never more than friends, because being friends and building engines together was good enough anyway. Karma kept her head in a crisis, and Tone's death was a catastrophe. She organized his finances, looked over his will, and set up the funeral. She was organized, and it was a comfort, or it would have been if I had noticed. She wasn't in denial; she just took things as they came. I should have envied her for that, but I wasn't paying attention to her. I was just so angry.

_I'm just so angry when I find Vert out back after the funeral, calling someone on his cell phone, and I need to take it out on someone, so I scream at him. Usually, Vert would have started screaming back, but he doesn't say anything. He didn't say anything. I see him-_ I saw him in the corner of my eye, muttering something to Kurt. Kurt mutters something back. "He's been missing in action for a couple of weeks," Vert replied, "And usually he finds the time to call me. I'm just… worried."

"Try not to think about it," Kurt said, "We need to focus on Nolo, in any case. He's going to need some help getting through this."

_And suddenly I'm confrontational again, screaming at Kurt, _who had only wanted to help, _but I'm telling him that I don't need his help or his pity, and that he and Vert could continue bitching away for all I care, because_

_But it's not helping anything_. It didn't help anything.

* * *

There were three of us; Tork, Karma and I. We were losing it. The world felt like it was choking to death, day by day, and we were the last candle in the dark. Tork seemed listless, broken. She and Karma had been doing the same thing, taking care of others to keep sane, to keep busy, to stop from mourning. I know Tork had a sister, and she'd died with the racers from Highway 35. He held himself together for years, offering comfort, being a steadfast shoulder to cry on, learning first aid to help Lani, Lani who hadn't been sure if she could ever treat another broken leg again. Lani had been losing it too. She'd seen too much and been too delicate. Tork's delicacy wasn't his problem. His tough shell meant he could calmly do the things that had to be done. But there was nobody left for him to protect, and so he got sick.

It was ironic, really. Tork was probably the strongest of all of us, and he died of a disease. Karma and I did our best to stop his suffering, but it wasn't enough. It was never enough.

* * *

I had done it, I'd broken into the Silencerz Headquarters, but then Vert had found me before I could find him. He seemed so casual about it, leaning against the wall, staring at me. "Do you remember in high school, you learn about the Nazis, and how after the Holocaust they'd say stuff like 'I did my duty as a soldier, I didn't know what I was doing'?" he asked conversationally, drawing on a cigarette. _Don't do that,_ I thought, _you're reminding me of Karma, and you're not allowed to do that._ He blew the smoke out between his lips, and continued, "Well, that's all a lie. Even when you have control, you know what you're doing, you have a choice. Did Tesla tell you about the organic technology? We stole it from the drones. You can control peoples thoughts, peoples actions," he laughed, hollowly, "But you have to break their will first."

"I think I know what you're saying," I mumbled nervously, fumbling in my pocket for a gun. I hated him then. He looked so casual, so relaxed—but that wasn't it, that wasn't it at all. There was tension lined in every muscle, and he looked so tired, so empty, and I didn't know what to say, so I started listening.

Vert looked too old. "I thought this was a good idea at first, the whole 'new world order ' thing. That's why I let him take Acceleron technologies, and that's why I helped him. Dad. But I found out—I found out what he was doing with that technology, that gear, not long after. I saw what he was doing to the other racers. What he planned to do to me. I tried to escape, you know, I knew he was evil, and I wanted out. I was so scared. He'd taken me aside, just after I'd saved you guys, and said we needed to talk. I shouldn't of listened. He got into my head, like he eventually did with everyone else. You see, with this technology, you've got to resist, resist, resist, or you die or get assimilated. And I resisted, Nolo. I resisted for so long. I watched our friends die, and I still resisted.

"But then…" Here Vert's shoulders slumped further, and he broke his eye contact with me for the first time, "Then they killed Alec. They killed him in… a slow, dreadful way, and I just… just couldn't resist anymore. I couldn't think about resisting. I just let him get in my head. I did such terrible things. I should have been stronger, should have stopped this, but I couldn't. Alec died. Everyone died. It was slow, and I was weak.

"Dad hooked himself up to the computers, right in the middle, where he can see everything. But he can't see you. You're a ghost. It's ironic, the technology he thought would let him live forever is going to kill him." Vert paused, stubbing out the cigarette, and resumed eye contact. "You are going to kill him, right?"

I said nothing.

"But you have to kill me first." He seemed strangely blasé about it, almost happy.

"This was a set-up, wasn't it. You left me to find those keys, and made sure that I'd be registered as dead along with Karma. You brought me here… to kill your dad. And you."

"Yeah. I'm sorry, but I can't do any of it myself. I couldn't even stop myself from killing Kurt. I couldn't stop myself from doing any of this. I'm a monster, and I need to die." He stared at me, and his blue eyes were as glassy and lifeless as Lani's had been. "I'm putrid, and rotten, and not worth saving. Sorry. It's all up to you now."

* * *

Karma designed her own death too. It's odd, Taro and Karma's deaths beginning and ending the monstrosity that happened after Highway 35. A morbid bookend to a morbid tale.

Karma killed herself to save me, or more accurately, she got herself killed to save me. She drew the police away from me, taking my bloodstained shirt with her. She knew what would happen next. She knew that I'd be considered dead. She knew that Vert had enough of himself left that he would want to die. She had planned. And I was alone.

_I'm walking deeper and deeper into the Silencerz facilities, searching for the center…_

When Tone died, I was driven by rage. I didn't know how else to feel.

I figured it out when Karma died.

Maybe if Tone was still around…

_I have Vert's handgun in my grip, and his blood on my hands. _

We were young, and building a castle out of Lego bricks.

_Nobody notices me._

Karma was using a tape measure.

When Tone died, I wanted everyone to feel how I felt.

_When people find out that Vert is dead, they'll cheer, and that's not fair. None of this is fair._

Tone kept using the red bricks, and I got cross with him. _Doesn't he know the red bricks are mine?_

_There's a door, and it opens._

Everyone was dead, and I was alone. _I am alone. I'm the last one standing, the proverbial final girl; it's all up to me now and that other cliché crap. _

_My name is Nolo Pasaro, and this is it._

**AN/ So… yeah. This is kindof based on the Junkyard's future chapter's in tone, but if anything it's proof that I need to not write fanfiction after rereading The House of Leaves. There is some OOC, I think, but I'm not sure where… Reviews would be appreciated, as they might help me understand what the hell is going on in this fic. Cookies for everyone who read it! **


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